Re: DEP-11: AppStream and Component Metadata for Debian
On Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 01:37, Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au> wrote:
> Charles Plessy <plessy@debian.org> writes:
>> Perhaps you can add a short explanation about what AppStream is for ?
>> I did not find a short and simple introduction on the upstream web
>> page.
>
> I searched in vain for an explanation of AppStream also.
For starters, see the report/discussion from the AppInstaller meeting
(where this AppStream thing was born):
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2011/01/msg00798.html
( Message-id: <20110127021338.GA18879@upsilon.cc> )
In "short" for us: We have a very good package management system¹,
but we are lacking a good system to manage applications.
Tools like the general software-center, the specialized goplay or
a codec-downloader for media-players need (a lot of) metadata to provide a
good experience, but this metadata is currently not as easily available
as the metadata for packages.
Building on that idea that we introduce a new layer with talking about
applications instead of packages it makes sense to don't care for the
underlying package system and use the resulting tools on all distros:
We would need a common format for metadata then…
The DEP sounds less distro-agnostic through with its additions of fields &
the usage of rfc822 and focuses more on getting right of metadata-packages
like app-install-data instead, so if this DEP is a stepping stone or a
distro-agnostic funeral is to be decided by the drivers…
Best regards
David Kalnischkies
¹ I might be too biased to say that through
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